[Falconoffury]

Now you think that hybrid cars and plugin hybrids will save the day. I read that there are about 205 million cars in the United States. To replace all of those cars with nothing but hybrids is going to take a long time, and lots of economic growth that honestly is going to get squeezed by oil depletion.

One thing that you haven't really understood is the fact that building new industry for coal and coal liquification, car replacement, and electricity is going to take a massive amount of energy in a time where the world is in depletion. We can expect 3% yearly depletion of oil. Under good economic conditions, coal has only grown about 2% per year. In a long lasting recession, expect coal to grow 1% per year.

Just accept for a moment that coal liquification will not keep pace with oil depletion. How can we expect to eventually get out of the recession if coal liquification and other alternative energy can never be expected to keep pace with depletion? My answer is that that depletion will continue to outpace alternative energy, and we won't be able to transition to a different economy until the population goes way down to accomodate the new levels of energy.

Even if the world population stayed the same for a whole year, that would mean a dieoff in some parts of the world. Check out this site.

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop

I have calculated that on the first day of 2004 to the first day of 2005 world population grew by 93,236,423. Think about it. Just for the world population to stay the same for one year, the death rate has to go up that many people! I heard the Indian Ocean tsunami was only about 150k people killed. It would be a worldwide disaster just for the population to stay the same for one year. That's how insane our population has become.

Now, to tie the above paragraph into my point. Since we can expect that alternative energies will never keep pace with depletion, we can expect at the best of circumstances hundreds of millions of additional deaths in the first 10 years of depletion after peak oil. To go back to just 6 billion people in 10 years, the death rate would have to increase by roughly 150 million people per year during that period. That is how inevitable the dieoff is.

[Doly]

I personally think that jtmorgan61 is optimistic, but reasonable.

[jtmorgan61]

Market has fallen 30% in the last few years if measured in Euros. Only reason still around 10,000 is because the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen so much.

To illustrate, me gettting a raise from $50,000 to $100,000 doesn't mean we're not in a recession if the value of the dollars in my bank account have dropped by half.

Not to be forever non-trusting, but can you point me towards the source for this? I'm concerned that this perspective is generated by US/Euro exchange rates.

And if the local purchasing power of the dollar is the same, then do you call it a recession, exactly?

Morever, according to the Economist no less, most of the economic growth, job creation, etc. of the last 4 years is either in home building or suburbian servicing.

2/5, if I remember correctly, which is still a huge share for this segment of the economy.

That bubble pops, in due part to high energy costs, and kiss the economy as seen throught the eyes of the average person good bye

Which it is starting to do right now, apparently. It will be interesting to see what happens. Based on Britain's experience over the last two years, I would be surprised if the bottom falls out dramatically and completely, but I'm still quite glad I don't own a house.

Then what? Solar and wind, accounting for a fraction of one percent of our energy diet are all of a sudden large scale replacements?

Plus nuclear, with continuing technological advance and (hopefully) emerging environmental consciousness, over 30 years of gradual transition? I think it's a distinct possibility.

If this was going to happen, say by 2025, you would need to be seeing a large scale switch happening NOW. It is not. Instead we are invading, raiding, crashing our economies, etc. . . .

According to Hirsch it takes about 10 years for cars and trucks to turn over, on average. So if we are going to get plug-in hybrids by 2025, we need to start introducing them in 2015, which seems like a fairly reasonable timescale.

Like making that 60 mile round trip from home to work on a bike?

Like moving closer to work, gradually producing densification around commercial areas and decreasing the motivation to keep building suburbs. Ya know, like Kunstler's long emergency, only without the oncoming collapse of civilization.

Don't forget that our consumption level is much higher, our debt level is out of control, our leaders couldn't be any worse, we are involved in a war "that will not end in our lifetimes" and our technological subsitution capacity has increased only in absolute terms. In terms relative to our overall energy consumption, it has moved from "zilch" to "next-to-zilch"

Politically things are worse, and so the result will likely be worse than the 1970's. I expect the next two decades to be, um, exciting, but see transition out rather than continuing slide.

"Next-to-zilch" becomes "quite a lot" over a decade if the demand is there.

[jtmorgan61]

Now you think that hybrid cars and plugin hybrids will save the day.

I expect that they will be part of the response to peak oil. No single technology or power source will do it alone.

I read that there are about 205 million cars in the United States. To replace all of those cars with nothing but hybrids is going to take a long time, and lots of economic growth that honestly is going to get squeezed by oil depletion.

It takes a decade, on average, for cars to turn over according to the Hirsch report. If hybrids (which are not that much more expensive) are being produced instead of ICE, I don't see where disproportionate growth is necessary.

One thing that you haven't really understood is the fact that building new industry for coal and coal liquification, car replacement, and electricity is going to take a massive amount of energy in a time where the world is in depletion. We can expect 3% yearly depletion of oil. Under good economic conditions, coal has only grown about 2% per year. In a long lasting recession, expect coal to grow 1% per year.

Prices also dropped dramatically in the coal industry. I would expect modest price rises to substantially boost production growth.

Just accept for a moment that coal liquification will not keep pace with oil depletion. How can we expect to eventually get out of the recession if coal liquification and other alternative energy can never be expected to keep pace with depletion? My answer is that that depletion will continue to outpace alternative energy, and we won't be able to transition to a different economy until the population goes way down to accomodate the new levels of energy.

If increased production, increased efficiency, and demand destruction never catch up with depletion rates, then you are indeed correct. But a little from column A, (coal to oil, TD, oil sands), a lot from column B (transportation techs over the next 20 years), and a little from column C (a 5-10 year recession) mean that I disagree.

Even if the world population stayed the same for a whole year, that would mean a dieoff in some parts of the world. Check out this site.

http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop

I have calculated that on the first day of 2004 to the first day of 2005 world population grew by 93,236,423. Think about it. Just for the world population to stay the same for one year, the death rate has to go up that many people! I heard the Indian Ocean tsunami was only about 150k people killed. It would be a worldwide disaster just for the population to stay the same for one year. That's how insane our population has become.

I don't know. Is Japan about to go into a die off? Is Italy? There's nothing wrong with *eventually* lowering the population, by keeping birth rate below death rate.

[Falconoffury]

I would love to see lower birth rates, but I don't delude myself into thinking that most of the world would choose that route. Some countries stop growing largely because of emigration and a lack of space. Japan is a pretty unique case. It's still growing, but very slowly. I think part of the reasoning behind their slow growth is that the country is getting overcrowded and the social structure is less volatile than most of the world and they are more easily able to adapt to fewer births.

Expect 95% of the world to be pushing its limits on birth rates, just as it is today. Assuming that, we can expect the world death rate to rise somewhere between 80-100 million people per year just to break even on population.

If you come back and say that lower birth rates will solve the overpopulation problem, then I'm done. If your optimism can't be penetrated by facts and comparisons, then the thread just turned into a waste of my time. All I can say is keep an open mind and keep researching. Challenge your own statements. Find out more about how much electricity the world would need, how higher oil prices affect construction projects, and how many people can the planet support after 10 years of oil depletion. I think I've said about all I can say.

[jtmorgan61]

I would love to see lower birth rates, but I don't delude myself into thinking that most of the world would choose that route. Some countries stop growing largely because of emigration and a lack of space. Japan is a pretty unique case.

Um, Italy? Large sectors of Europe are heading that direction. The US would soon be below replacement if not for immigration.

It's still growing, but very slowly. I think part of the reasoning behind their slow growth is that the country is getting overcrowded and the social structure is less volatile than most of the world and they are more easily able to adapt to fewer births.

I would bet that most of these countries (tho not Japan) aren't more crowded than many African and Asian countries (i.e. India, Bangladesh?) Key factors usually identified in surveys include changes in the role of women, access to contraception, raising marriage age, and a switch away from farming (where children are a help) to urban living (where they are a money drain).

Expect 95% of the world to be pushing its limits on birth rates, just as it is today. Assuming that, we can expect the world death rate to rise somewhere between 80-100 million people per year just to break even on population.

Birth rates are declining pretty much around the globe. The current UN report tends towards stabilization around 10 billion, which is reached very slowly after about 9 billion is reached in 2050. And each of the last 3 versions of the report has dropped the estimate slightly as developing countries have surprised the authors each time.

If you come back and say that lower birth rates will solve the overpopulation problem, then I'm done. If your optimism can't be penetrated by facts and comparisons, then the thread just turned into a waste of my time.

But the major reports suggest that population growth is slowing down. Each billion added from now on will be added more slowly. I haven't seen any credible reports in recent years that predict population beyond a peak of about 10 billion.

Now whether we can support another 4 billion, and at what level we can do it, that is a real question.

Comparisons *do* work for me, but only if they match the facts, as best I can gather them from major governmental and intergovernmental reports.

[MonteQuest]

But the major reports suggest that population growth is slowing down. Each billion added from now on will be added more slowly. I haven't seen any credible reports in recent years that predict population beyond a peak of about 10 billion.

Now whether we can support another 4 billion, and at what level we can do it, that is a real question.

Comparisons *do* work for me, but only if they match the facts, as best I can gather them from major governmental and intergovernmental reports.

These are the median predictions that assume a continuing decline the birth rate. At the present rate of 1.2 %, the world will double to 13 billion in 58 years. All of these studies predict will we reach ZPG in 50 years if the birth rate continues to decline, but then we will start to increase once again.

In the journal, Politics and the Life Sciences of September 1997, Professor Kenneth Smail made the case for dramatically reducing human numbers, and leading commentators in the field of population and development contributed their views on it.

The case for popluation reduction

[Tanada]

This should serve as a reminder of just how far we have not come in the 12 years since peak oil dot com was founded to educate those who want to understand resource depletion.

I think we can all agree that if anything is to replace even a significant fraction (10, 20, 30%?) of our oil and gas consumption, it is going to have to be distributed across the nation, and moreover, the world.

If you're waiting for renewable derived hydrogen, algae produced biodiesel, the entity pazoozoo, etc. . .to come save us, remember that we're going to need some type of system to distribute that stuff wide and far. To understand the scale of what we're talking about, take a look at this:

http://images.pennnet.com/mapsearch/all_pipe.jpgPipeline Map

Remember, this is just a map of North America. Since N. AMerica is entirely dependent on the rest of the world economy (and vice versa) we have to worry about the rest of the globe as well.

Best,

Matt

[ennui2]

I dare you to contact Matt Savinar and have him personally offer up his own comments on his past position.

[Tanada]

I dare you to contact Matt Savinar and have him personally offer up his own comments on his past position.

If I thought there was a snowballs chance in Saudi Arabia I would, but he has been refusing all P.O. related messages for a long time now.

[AdamB]

This should serve as a reminder of just how far we have not come in the 12 years since peak oil dot com was founded to educate those who want to understand resource depletion.

...and did we educate them properly with our wisdom, letting them know that the ability of the US to grow oil production faster than at any time in its history only required a higher price, and that the EIA had called the proper global amounts of oil as far back as 2006? Or did we tell them something else?

Matt Savinar is also the one who famously claimed that peak oilers are psycho religious nuts, seeking a father figure, before slamming the door on the lot of them, and becoming a respectable palm reader.

[ennui2]

I suspect down deep Matt is still a doomer, although not a fast-crasher, but is deciding to, ya know, get on with life and not eat-drink-and-breathe doom anymore. He could have chosen a better profession to get into besides astrology, but hey, he's in a better place than, let's say, Mike Ruppert, who wallowed in doom to his final days.